By Cao Ming and Janet Huang, Vision Times
ANNANDALE, Virginia — On Aug. 10, a community leaders’ meeting was hosted by the Asian Community Service Center in Northern Virginia. The event brought together prominent voices and speakers from across the Asian American community to warn the American public of increased infiltration by authoritarian regimes — particularly the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — and how this poses a threat to the U.S. They also urged local governments to take stronger measures to counter it.
The gathering focused on the CCP’s expanding influence operations in the U.S. Host Ms. Kelly noted that in recent years, Beijing has deployed increasingly sophisticated tactics, including information and legal warfare targeting Falun Gong practitioners and New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline rooted in the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Despite being peaceful in nature, the CCP launched a large-scale suppression of the group in 1999 after seeing its popularity, which was estimated at 70 to 100 million practitioners, as a threat to its authoritarian grip. The persecution has continued unabated for over two decades, with thousands of Falun Gong adherents both in China and abroad being routinely subjected to surveillance, arbitrary travel bans, and arrests.
These infiltration campaigns by the CCP have taken place inside the U.S., including in the Greater Washington, D.C. area, representing cross-border repression reaching into American communities, the speakers noted. But many residents, said Ms. Kelly, remain unaware, while local officials often fail to recognize the severity of the threat. The goal of the meeting was to raise public urgency in defending freedom and fundamental human rights, she added.
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A short film by the Falun Dafa Information Center — “Why is Beijing Trying to Silence American Artists?” — was screened, documenting bomb threats and smear campaigns against Shen Yun over the past two years, all traced back to the CCP.
‘Why the CCP’s infiltration is especially malignant’
He Bin, a China analyst from Northern Virginia, recalled his shock 15 years ago upon seeing a “China Daily” news box on the streets outside the White House.
“[Can you imagine] if they had ‘Washington Post’ news boxes in Tiananmen Square — it’s impossible, right? But they have that CCP mouthpiece just outside the White House,” he said. That moment, he added, sparked his focus on Beijing’s infiltration efforts in the U.S.
While every nation seeks to influence others in pursuit of national interests, He argued that the CCP’s approach is fundamentally different. It blends an authoritarian political system, vast financial resources, and a destructive communist ideology — three elements that create a “synergistic closed loop.” The regime’s closed political system enables total information control via the “Great Firewall,” while decades of Western investment have fueled China’s rise, giving Beijing unprecedented funds to project influence worldwide. Most dangerous of all, He said, is the CCP’s guiding ideology.
According to He, the CCP teaches its citizens that war with the U.S. is inevitable because the true conflict is ideological. “Every step they take is preparation for that ‘showdown moment,’” he said. “So this is why the Chinese business infiltration is very evil, and that intention is to harm democracy and make the United States decline.”
Virginia’s proximity to Washington, D.C., its concentration of intelligence agencies such as the CIA, major data centers, military facilities in Norfolk, and elite universities, He noted, make it a prime target for CCP influence. He cited several Virginia-linked cases:
- A young American, targeted while studying in Shanghai, was groomed to seek jobs at the State Department and CIA, later arrested and convicted.
- A Loudoun County radio station covertly funded by the CCP broadcast China Radio International programming for 12 years (2011–2023) across the D.C. area.
- In 2013, Chinese state-linked investors bought Smithfield Foods for $4.7 billion, raising national security concerns.
- Beijing copied the curriculum and blueprints of Virginia’s elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, creating over 20 TJ-branded schools in China.
- In 2021, Virginia Tech partnered with Xi’an University of Electronic Science and Technology, an institution with deep ties to China’s military powers.
Systematic infiltration of US universities
Xia Yeliang, a former Peking University economics professor now living in Fairfax County, said CCP infiltration of the U.S. and the West has only intensified over the past two decades. In 2014, while at the Cato Institute, he testified before Congress about Confucius Institutes — programs presented as cultural exchanges but often used for ideological indoctrination by the CCP.
“So if you are intellectual, with free ideas, if you like the Western ideology, you apply for the position in Confucius Academy, you will be declined,” said Xia, adding, “They will choose the person they trust.” Xia himself was rejected for such a position after his political beliefs became known. He later advised that the U.S. restrict and close the institutes — steps that began to occur in following years.
RELATED: Confucius Institutes Rebrand on Canadian Soil Under New Name
Xia warned that the CCP sends agents to elite American universities — Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford — posing as visiting scholars, many from the United Front Work Department or Xinhua News Agency. Senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) generals also routinely visit the U.S. for talks with senior officials and gather military intelligence in the process. Through sustained technology theft, he said, Beijing has “nearly matched” the U.S. in military capability.
He also noted that FBI educational films have documented how American students studying in China were recruited as agents to infiltrate the CIA and State Department. The CCP’s “United Front” strategy targets both Westerners and Chinese-Americans.
‘Education alone is not enough’
Dr. Srilekha Reddy Palle, chair of Virginia’s Asian Advisory Board and representing the governor’s office unofficially, said her daughter attends TJ High School and has seen firsthand how the CCP acquired the school’s curriculum and plans. She welcomed the meeting’s agenda, which included raising awareness among Virginia candidates and officials about CCP infiltration, but stressed that awareness must be matched by action.
RELATED: CCP Infiltration Reaches Top Levels of US Federal Reserve, Senate Probe Finds
“If any official says, ‘Oh my god, I was not aware this is going on,’ you really have to look at them and say that either you are ignorant, or you are choosing to be ignorant, or you are lying,” Palle said. “If they are choosing to ignore, how do we make them accountable… It will be a shame to see us continue to vote for folks who think that we will buy into the concept that (they can claim they didn’t know while) continuing to with the Chinese government and making them rich.”
Palle also stressed the importance of distinguishing between the CCP and the Chinese people: “The Chinese people are phenomenal… it’s the CCP that has been doing the infiltration across the world.”
‘If America loses freedom, there’s nowhere left to go’
Thuy Nguyen, who hails from Vietnam, recounted fleeing the communist country as a child after her father — who had worked for the U.S. Embassy before 1975 — was imprisoned by the Viet Cong for 15 years. Labeled as “belonging to the U.S. community,” she was then barred from attending school.
“We came here for the freedom. We came here because we found that and we couldn’t live in Vietnam,” she said, adding that if America “loses freedom, there will be nowhere left to run.”
Nguyen recently visited the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, which covers China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Cambodia. “We are here, and we are lucky we have freedom,” she said, “but many spies have come here to attack us in the U.S., and we must protect (our freedom).”
Also speaking was Ms. Wang Chunyan from Dalian, China, who was imprisoned in a labor camp for practicing Falun Gong. She displayed clothes she had been forced to make for export to the U.S. and Europe — products made with forced labor that now dominate global markets. She also survived repeated blood tests while in custody, narrowly escaping forced organ harvesting before fleeing to the U.S. She now resides in Virginia.
RELATED: 54 Virginia Lawmakers Demand Stronger US Action Against CCP’s Persecution of Falun Gong
Representatives from Mongolian, Indian, Pakistani, and Korean communities, as well as local students, shared their experiences of CCP authoritarianism. Caleb Max, grandson of former Virginia congressman Frank Wolf, warned that Beijing’s influence in Virginia remains both “significant and dangerous.”
Concluding the event, Asian Community Service Center director Ms. Tang announced an upcoming Virginia election candidate forum for the end of this month, where residents can interact and present their concerns directly to candidates running for office in the state.
For more information on upcoming events, including the community meet-and-greet slated for Aug. 31, please visit the official Asian Community Service Center’s site here.
